The Exodus Story

Haggadah Section: -- Exodus Story

Let My People Go!

(Celebrant)

We weren’t always slaves in Egypt.  We became slaves….and the story of how we became slaves to the Pharaohs of Egypt, and ultimately how we were freed, is really the basis of the story of Passover.  It’s a part of history that belongs to all of us.  By telling this story year after year, we’re ensuring that we’ll never forget our oppression or our freedom.

Many years ago, in the land of Egypt Joseph, the son of Jacob and Rachel, was sold into slavery by his brothers.  Joseph was skilled and intelligent and soon became an official in the court of the Egyptian Pharaoh.

Joseph could interpret dreams, which he sometimes used to predict the future.  He offered the pharaoh his prediction of an upcoming famine, which the Pharaoh heeded.

(Celebrant)

Because Joseph’s timely advice saved the land from a great famine, Pharaoh invited them to stay when Joseph’s family came to Egypt searching for food.  They lived in peace for many years and became known as the Israelites.

Years later, a new Pharaoh came to rule.  He did not remember Joseph and all he had done for the Egyptians.  He saw the Israelites’ population was growing rapidly, an feared that in a war they might side with the enemy and become a danger to Egypt.

To remove his “problem of the Israelites”, Pharaoh enslaved them.  He forced them to work hard, building his cities and palaces.  Baking bricks and carrying stones in the desert heat, they knew neither peace nor rest, only misery and pain.  To limit their population, Pharaoh decreed, “Every baby boy born to an Israelite woman shall be drowned in the river.”

(Celebrant)

In an effort to save their baby, Amram and Yocheved, Jewish slave couple hid him in a basket on the riverbank.  When Pharaoh’s daughter, the princess, came down to the river to bathe, she found the baby and decided to take him home to the Palace.  The princess named the baby, Moses; which means, “brought out of the water.”

Because she needed a nurse to feed and care for the baby, the princess looked for a Jewish nurse.  Yocheved’s daughter, Miriam, who was hiding by the river watching, came out and told the princess that she know of a nurse.  She ran home and brought Yocheved back to the princess, not revealing that she was really Moses’ mother.  Yocheved became Moses’ nurse and was able to care for him throughout his childhood.

(Celebrant)

Moses, being the adopted son of the princess, would have lived a rich life in the Pharoaoh's palace, but he could not bear to see his people suffer as slaves.  One day, he came upon an Egyptian taskmaster who was beating an Israelite slave.  In a fit of rage, Moses beat the Egyptian to death.  His crime soon became known and Moses was forced to leave his homeland and flee to the desert.  He became a shepherd in the land of Midian.

One day while tending his sheep, Moses came upon a bush that was on fire.  Although it was burning, it was not being consumed.  He heard God’s voice coming from the bush, telling Moses to go back to Egypt and free his people from slavery – and lead them out of Egypt.  Because Moses was merely a shepherd, he asked God, “How may I accomplish this great task, I am but a lowly shepherd, and I am of impaired speech.  God replied, “Go forth to Egypt with your wooden staff.  I will be by your side and the Pharaoh will be forced to free your people”

We all sing:

When Israel was in Egypt’s Land

Let my people go!

Oppressed so hard they could not stand

Let my people go!

Go down, Moses, way down to Egypt’s land

Tell old, Pharaoh,

Let my people go!

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